


Angels Fires

by Ulfsbane



Series: Special Forces RWBY AU [2]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - Military, Gen, Military, Special forces AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:47:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24766414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ulfsbane/pseuds/Ulfsbane
Summary: As tension mounts between two city-states of two different kingdoms due to an international incident, it becomes clear that the situation is devolving into a full-scale conflict that neither Vale nor Vacuo can afford to back down from.Vale's black operations command, Beacon, call upon RWBY to serve their kingdom once more.
Series: Special Forces RWBY AU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1788265
Kudos: 1





	1. Preparation Phase

**Author's Note:**

> Another plot idea that was bouncing between the two last neurons in my brain housing group has escaped.
> 
> Please leave some constructive criticism so I can get better at writing, and maybe point out some errors so I can fix them. Thanks for reading!

The young woman and her daughter were lying in the middle of their ruined living room as it shook from bombardment and gunfire. She had light blue hair matted with flowing blood, and brown eyes that tried to tell the little girl in her arms that everything would be okay. The young girl, who had her mother's hair and eyes, could not hear her comforting words over the loud sounds of explosions outside their home and her own uncontrollable sobs. She held on tightly as tears soaked the older woman's shirt and more dust rained down from the ceiling from another mortar round landing on their roof.

She silently prayed and begged for someone, anyone, to come save them.

\--

Ruby Rose, team leader of Team RWBY, stared at her altimeter as she and the rest of ther team descended from the dark sky at terminal velocity. If it hadn't been in the middle of night, she thought she would have appreciated the view better.

At around 4000 feet, she looked around to make sure everybody had enough dispersion not to hit each other or tangle their parachutes together. Her hands waved out to signal that she was about to deploy, and with a deep breath into her oxygen mask, she pulled the cord.

Once on the ground, they silently secured their used parachutes, and regrouped. They could hear the chatter of machinegun fire and the pounding artillery of artillery in the distance, in the direction of their final target.

After a quiet final check of weapons and gear, Team RWBY started marching towards the small town, the noise getting closer and closer. They stayed in a wide formation while covering every angle, in case of any stray shells or unexploded ordanance.

They systematically made their way through the small, squat buildings, NVGs on and suppressed rifles aimed in all directions. In order to stay undetected and hit the target house from its flank, they made a wide loop through alleyways and side streets lined with garbage dumps and broken cars.

After a long, stealthy approach, they finally arrived at a corner of an alleyway across from the one-story building.

Blake was in the lead, her sense of direction and natural night vision as a faunus appointing her as the pointman. She held a palm up to signal hold, peaked around the corner, and whispered.

"Two sentries, side door."

Two men in identical shirt and shorts, were standing by the door, armed with old assault rifles. They wouldn't have been able to see RWBY in the dark. The Team, however, were able to see them just fine through their NVGs. Blake was the only one wearing a monocular, since she was to see in the dark but still needed to be able to see IR.

Ruby stepped forward from behind her in formation. She shouldered her silenced DMR and lined up the thermal sight to the man on right, Blake covered the one the left.

They simultaneously pulled the trigger, and both sentries fell to the ground in a heap. Their rifles loudly clattered to the ground as they were discarded.

All four operators immediately rushed out of cover and converged on the locked door. With Yang covering the crack with her machinegun, Blake pulled out a lock picking set. It took her only a few seconds to open the lock, and Weiss tossed a nine-banger inside.

As soon as they heard first crash, they rushed inside.  
Rounding the corner, Yang sent a burst into the back of a man that had been facing an open window away from them. A moment later, two more flung the front door open and were promptly cut down by Ruby and Weiss by a quiet salvo of rounds.

With the first room clear, Yang set security and the rest all ran into the only other room in the house, and came face to face with a man crouched behind a young girl zip-tied to a metal folding chair.

Before he could even aim his rifle, Ruby sent a high-caliber bullet straight between his eyebrows. The man fell backwards, and Blake flanked around to fire a few more into his chest.

Weiss kneeled down to cut the hostage out. The medical shears made quick work of the plastic cuffs. But before she could lift the girl out the chair, Ozpin voice came over comms.

"RWBY-One, this TOC. ENDEX."

Blake and Weiss turned their heads to send a puzzled look at their team leader. ENDEX was only called when the training exercise actually ended, or maybe when one of the players did something dangerous or way off-script.

"Roger that, TOC," Ruby frowned. She turned around and yelled out "ENDEX!"

The man who had just tried killing them moments ago stood up with a groan to dust himself off. The actors outside the room did as well, finally able to clutch at the sore spots they had been shots by the paint rounds.

Yang peaked her head around the door. "Why are we ENDEX-ing? Something happen?"

"I don't know," Ruby said. "Let's go see what's up."

\--

The Operations Briefing Room was sound-proof and signal-proof, but still a comfortable place to be in. It looked just like any other conference room, except everybody was wearing Valean Military uniforms. Screens lined up the walls- except for the back wall, on which hung memorabilia of past battles fought. Some by Team RWBY, many more by their predecessors. A larger screen was set on the front wall. A large table with a conference phone system in the middle was surrounded by swivel chairs, in which sat Team RWBY.

Glynda and Ozpin stood in front of the projector screen, which showed an aerial shot of a burning city. At the bottom right of the screen read 'Greenbourne, Vale'.

"Three hours ago," Ozpin started. "Greenbourne, a frontier city-state at the border of Vale and Vacuo, was attacked by a Vacuan city-state called 'Sandhelm', located three hundred miles west of the border."

Team RWBY stayed quiet, shocked.

Ozpin continued. "The western half of the city was destroyed before Greenbourne was able to rout the enemy forces back. Casualties are mostly civilian, and we're still trying to figure out the exact number.

"The Vacuan government hasn't responded to our diplomatic lines, and the King of Vale fears this might be a declaration of war-"

"Diplomacy?" Yang snarled. "Vale was stabbed in the back without provocation by a kingdom that said they were our allies. We should be preparing for some sort of immediate counterattack, not try to talk to them."

"The Navy and Airforce have mobilized, and ground troops are being amassed the border. But for now, we want to avoid full-scale war. Intelligence has shown that there is some dissenssion within Vacuo's leadership, which leads us to think this might have been an unsanctioned attack."

Ozpin stepped to the side, and Glynda pressed a button, showing the next slide. A personal file came on screen, showing the profile picture of an older man with greying dirty-blond hair and beard and light brown eyes. Ruby thought for an older man, his eyes had the youthfulness of ambition.

"This is Almond Brune, mayor of Sandhelm. We believe he is behind the Greenbourne Incident," Ozpin explained.

"This is who we want to negotiate with?" Weiss asked. She leaned forward to read the file. "Former military officer, classicaly educated, no known affiliation outside of Vacuo..."

"No," Glynda said. "We want you to take him out."

"Assassination? Wouldn't that potentially make the situation worse?" Blake asked.

"Not exactly. This is a coup d'état."


	2. Conduct Phase

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wasn't really happy with this chapter. Too short, didn't like how I expressed some parts of it... But whatever, you know? I still wanted to post it.

Aly Roux, one of the members of Mayor Brune's advisors committee, was selected to be his replacement. She was politically ambitious, and believed to be a probable dissentient of the Greenbourne Incident based on her psychological and personal profile in Beacon's database.

RWBY wasn't really put in the loop of the strategic and political machinations of the Valean kingdom's government's darker corners. They were closer to assassins than politicians and even their offical job title of soldiers.

\--

Nobody talked or even moved inside the dark of the helicopter cabin illuminated by a single red light. Usually, everybody would be chatting, or going over the plan again, or at least their weapons and gear.

Everything had already been doubled-checked and triple checked. Everybody- even the pilots and their helicopter, were going in sanitized, which meant nobody had anything on their person that might have compromised their identity. Ruby didn't even wear the wedding the ring on her finger for this op, the first time ever since she had married Jaune several years ago. Yang's remembrance bracelet, Blake's bow, and Weiss's lucky knife were all missing as well.

The tense silence was compounded by the fact that they were currently crossing the Vacuo-Vale border, where there was a high concentration of both Vacuan and Valean anti-air assets. So secretive was this mission, that either country was bound to shoot them down if they were to be detected.

It was mentioned in the brief that the metallic black helicopter itself was loaded with new stealth technology- minimal radar and heat signature, signal-and-sound elimination, and many others that weren't supposed to know about. Blake noted that even with her enhanced hearing, this might have been the quietest aircraft that they had ever riden in.

Even then, they knew that they could have been blown out of the sky any minute.

They weren't any windows inside, so they relied on the pilots to let them know when they were going to land. When the co-pilot, a female bat faunus, silently held up five fingers, as the helicopter started descending, Weiss leaned forward to punch the large button to let the starboard-side doors open.

It took a second for the heavy electronic locks to disengage, and the wind starting blowing in through the crack. It picked up more and more as the thick doors slowly swung out further and further.

The Team flipped their night-vision goggles down, washing the entire landscape a digital green. Below them, the night life of the city showed in bright, aligned dots, like stars on the ground. Ruby recognized the neighborhood from studying the maps and satellite images, and was able to pinpoint the target building.

The mayor's residence was a simple, isolated, two-story manor in the rough center of Sandhelm surrounded by a metal fence, guard stations, and a vehicle checkpoint for the main road leading up to it. It had a central structure and a single story wing, both with faded red roof tiles.

Standard procedure for a hit like this would have been to sneak in with fake identities or through a liability in their security, but they were pressed with time, and the surrounding area was too well guarded. So an overt-covert plan it was.

After passing over the perimeter, the pilot yanked on the stick, stopping the chopper to a hover right above the slanted rooftop of the manor. Yang kicked the thick fast rope out of the cabin. One by one, each member slid down with only the grip of their gloves and boots to slow them down, and unstrapped their suppressed guns as they landed on the angled tiles.

Before the helicopter even started to rise and fly away, Blake was already setting up a rappel system to lower them down to a lower rooftop, where they could access a window.

Weiss was the first to rappel down, then Blake and Yang, inching their way upside down for a more advantageous angle. Ruby set security on the roof, watching the main road with her farther-reaching rifle.

Blake picked the window latch open, covered by Weiss and Yang's submachine guns the entire time. However, the alarms were already inert. Blake frowned, and relayed this to Ruby.

"It might have been a sentry making a mistake or something," Ruby replied. She didn't believe that reasoning herself, but it wasn't enough to order them to pull out. "Just keep going, and watch out for any secondaries."

Blake complied, but didn't find any, which worried her even more. She and Weiss spun right side up and quietly entered the threshold, followed by Yang. They slowly made their way down the hallway, already knowing their way inside the house, and the location of the bedroom.

They stopped at the door to one of the guest rooms- intel had found that Mayor Almond Brune actually preferred it to the master bedroom.

Being the stealthier one of the group, Blake gently opened it with one hand, the other weilding her silenced firearm. She swiftly stepped in and swept the room, and Weiss came in right behind her. Weiss rounded the corner and marched right into the attached bathroom, clearing it, even checking behind the shower curtains.

"Clear," she whispered.

"Clear," Blake whispered back. Weiss came out and saw her standing up from where she had been looking underneath the bed. The closet doors were already opened.

The pair walked out, and linked back up with Yang to go to the master bedroom.

The doors on this one was more impressive. Large wooden double doors with the colors of Sandhelm and the coat of arms of Vacuo underneath.

Weiss and Blake pushed the door open, and the three immediately fanned out. They found an empty bed, but they found their HVT speaking live on TV.

"...decisions based on irrational, emotional thoughts that stemmed out of a personal vendetta..."

The screen attached to the wall showed Almond Brune standing behind a podium, addressing a group of reporters, with police officers and federal agents behind him.

But for now, the operators made sure the scene was safe, clearing the immediate room, the large bathroom, the walk-in closet, and any corner a person might fit into.

Satisfied, the intruders turned back to the TV, and Yang radioed in her sister and team leader.

"Ruby, we have a dry hole. And bad news, we know where he is."


	3. Exploitation Phase

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's an update for the few who actually decided to follow and read this instead of being productive with your time.
> 
> I accept constructive criticism as payment for my work.

Glynda walked to the front of the conference room.  
"We have a situation-"

"Yeah, no shit, Sherlock," Yang interrupted. She was leaning back on her chair, arm draped back on the backrest and ankle on top of her knee.

"I meant to say, we still have a situation," Glynda explained. "Brune has been put on house arrest- but SIGINT found that he is still allowed free communcation with his advisor committee."

"So you're saying he's still the de facto leader of Sandhelm? And now he has the protection of the kingdom's government on top of Sandhelm's?" Weiss groaned.

"Both his and our kingdom's, actually," Ozpin cut in. "Vale will be officially accepting an agreement to try Brune in front of an international court."

"...and unofficially?" Blake asked tentatively.

"Our orders remain the same. Kill Almond Brune in order to secure Aly Roux's position as the new head of Sandhelm."

\---

International flights had been grounded, but Team RWBY used Beacon's more illegal connections to charter a plane to cross the border and land on a private airfield owned by a international construction company fronting for a human trafficking network, which perfectly suited their purpose. The greater good took priority after all, and Beacon liked having options in their backpocket.

Their transport didn't know who they were, just that they were to dump them in the middle of nowhere at night and were paid to forget they ever existed as they drove back.

Several miles from Brune's vacation home, RWBY donned their gear, conducted all necessary last-minute checks, and rucked their way to the target compound.

By the time they arrived, it was well past midnight, and the guards had become complacent and tired. Some were struggling to stay awake, others were asleep in cars or on chairs. Team RWBY had no trouble taking all of them down silently and slipping through with the help of digital night vision and suppressed weapons.

They were in a huge, triangle-shaped building, pointing north, with the second story being mostly a roof with a pool and a small indoor area at the north corner. The first floor was an open area in the middle supported by rows of columns, and the kitchen, laundry rooms, and the maids' rooms lined the west side. The three bedrooms were against the east side of the triangle.

Since it was bright inside, all four operators flipped their NVGs up. Yang set security to the west from behind a column, her LMG most suited for covering a larger area. Blake watched the stairs leading to the roof on the north from an offset angle behind a diffrent column, while Ruby and Weiss cleared out the bedrooms. They clearly needed more people for this raid, but the clandestine nature of it only allowed for the smallest number possible, and RWBY was the most experienced in getting out of situations like these alive.

The first bedroom was actually an office. A desk with a laptop, a bookshelf behind it, and some filing cabinets. Ruby and Weiss left with a mental note to go through here again to look for intel.

Before they opened the door to the next room, Weiss stopped and held her palm up. She pointed to the slit between the bottom of the door and the floor, where Ruby saw shadows moving and growing closer.

Ruby quickly but quietly went around Weiss and crossed to the other side of the door, then pointed her suppressor a few inches next to the handle. As soon as it started turning, she sent two rounds through the wooden door, and Weiss yanked it the rest of the way open to allow Ruby in through first.

A naked woman lied on the ground, bleeding from holes between her breasts, her limbs splayed out at awkward angles. They stepped over her into the rest of the room, filing away the guilt for later.

It was only through luck that the initial rounds that punched through the wall missed both of them. Ruby had been checking under the bed, crouched, and Weiss yanking the curtains open on the far wall. They both immediately hit the deck, and Ruby blindly returned fire into the next room, mixing even more dust into the air.

When the chaos abruptly stopped, Ruby jumped up to her feet, sprinted out as she transitioned to her sidearm, and rammed her way through the door to the third bedroom.

She recognized Almond Brune from the pictures in the target package. His left arm and stomach were bleeding, and he was hunched over, struggling to load a magazine with a single working hand.

Ruby swiftly sighted in and fired a single round straight between his eyebrows. His body went limp and hit the floor. Then she walked over and put two more in his chest for good measure.

She barely heard the weak cough over the sudden sound of gunfire coming from the central area. Ruby sprinted back to the previous room to see Weiss, bleeding out on the floor, weakly trying to reach the individual first aid kit strapped to the other side of her body armor.

Ruby slid to a stop on her knees next to Weiss, and ripped the pouch open. The biggest priority she could see was a wound in her side bleeding profusely. A bullet must have grazed the edge of the bulletproof plate. However, after unclipping her teammate's vest, Ruby found it was much worse.

The bullet had missed the front plate, pierced through, but was stopped by the plate in the back, and the fragmentation ricocheted back into her body. For now, she stuffed some clotting gauze in the biggest holes she could find and slapped a seal on each. She hastily clipped the armor back on, and dragged a now unconscious Weiss, leaving a trail of blood behind.

Blake was firing at the top of the stairs, where the remaining guards must have been trying to come through. Yang was already outside, peaking inside the south entrance, adding to the covering fire.

When Blake saw Ruby dragging Weiss on her right, she took it as a cue to bound back to Yang and grabbed Weiss as well.

A grenade tumbled down the stairs through the wall of lead, and went off as soon as it landed on the first floor, which Blake took the brunt of. Flooring and shrapnel and concussive force punched her forward, causing her to let go of Weiss, but she scrambles back up to her feet, limping after her two teammates to relative safety.

As soon as Ruby got outside, she yelled out, "Contact rear! One hundred meters!"

Sudden flashing red and blue lights blinded her. Her free arm instinctly flew to cover her eyes, forgoing her weapon. A megaphone blared to life.

"This is the Vacuean Police Force!" The megaphone waited for the gunfire to die down. "Surrender your weapons, and come out with your hands in the air!"

Ruby saw Blake's silhouette limp and stand in front of her, favoring her left leg, shielding Ruby and Weiss with her own battered body. Blake's rifle was up and ready to fire at the long line of police cars.

Behind her, Yang still had her weapon up as well, standing off against the guards, unmoving except for the deep breaths to get ready for another firefight.

They were ready to die here, and one of them was already dying in her arms.

Everything and everyone was now quiet. Ruby couldn't see past the lights and count how many they were now up against. She didn't know how many guards were left on the roof. Weiss didn't have much time until she bled out, or suffocated from the pressure in her chest cavity. And she didn't know if they even had enough rounds or a way to get to the extraction point. Ruby was ready to die for her teammates, but wasn't willing to die with them today.

Ruby took the mag out, unslung her rifle, set it down on the ground. She stood up with her hands in the air.

"Team RWBY, stand down."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Damn. I honestly forgot about this fic. Finally got around to finish the second half after I found the drafts in the shadow realm of my computer.
> 
> (By the way, would the description of Weiss's injury in this chapter be considered "Graphic Depiction of Violence"?)


	4. Erasure Phase

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> R&R & all that so I can get better at writing.

Ruby didn't recognize the man she was getting exchanged for. Maybe he didn't have that greying beard or had a few more pounds on him years or decades or how ever long he'd been in the custody of Vale. Or maybe it was because she had only been haunted by the faces of those she killed at night.

Her mind was so muddled that she couldn't wrap her around that she was finally free or how she got in the car. Ruby just suddenly realized that her husband was sitting next to her, his arms wrapped around her malnutritioned frame.

\---

Ozpin was the one to debrief her. It was lengthy, and the small room they were sitting was cold and uncomfortable and too bright, but was well worth the price of freedom. Her old commanding officer even offered to answer her questions as well. 

"How's my team doing?" she asked first.

"Ms. Schnee is still in recovery, but making good progress. Ms. Xia Long and Ms. Blake have fully healed, and have been waiting for your release and recovery to request to go back to active duty," he said.

Tears swelled in her eyes, but she made no motion to cover it. As the leader, Ruby had asked for the rest of her team to be released first. She was glad that they were okay.

"Will I... Be able to go back on active duty status?"

"We'll have to monitor your health," he answered. "Both mental and physical. Even if your door kicking days were to be over, Vale needs a hero right now."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Vale and Vacuo have been formally at war, Mrs Arc-Rose. But tension have been lowering, and talks of a peace treaty are already in the works."

Ruby frowned. "How? We still invaded Vacuo, didn't we?"

"Officially, we did not."

Ozpin leaned forward, elbows on the steel table seperating them. "We may have found evidence that a third party was responsible for supplying Almond Brune with weapons and funding for the Greenbourne Massacre, and used us to take him out."

Ruby wasn't sure he was supposed to give her this information, especially since they were definitely being recorded and monitored. But RWBY had almost died for this op, and she felt she at least had a right to know.

He continued. "An agreement has been made with our Vacuan counterpart. We will cooperate to disavow the results of any externa investigations of a third party involvment in exchange for erasure of the existence of this operation."

Ruby figured it meant Vale wouldn't expose Vacuo's inability to secure their borders to thwart foreign agents from operating on their soil as long as Vacuo didn't expose the warcrime Beacon had committed using inadequate intelligence.

"Who was that third party?" she asked.

"Investigation is still underway," he signed. "But we believe an individual named Cinder Fall is a high ranking member of this organization."

"Will Vacuo be helping us track her down?"

"No. That was a mistake our own agency made, which we intended rectify ourselves."

"Good. She's mine."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Good. She's mine." was the prompt I started with, actually. Surprising where your mind goes to.


End file.
